Tammy: This is Tammy Proctor. Today I am pleased to welcome my
colleague, Dr. Chris Conte, who joins me to talk about dumplings. we
have spent several weeks trying to define what a dumpling is and
what it is not, and this week’s food is ambiguous in that regard.
The mandazi, a stuffed deep-fried treat, is served by street vendors in
Kenya and Tanzania.
Chris, welcome to the show – can you give us a brief description of
the mandazi and where you have eaten it?
Chris: Yes, I can do that. A mandazi is a deep-fried bread made with
coconut milk, flour, egg, and if possible, spiced with cardamom. The best
mandazi I ever ate was at the Mombasa Hotel on river road in Nairobi in
1983.
Cardamom and clove spiced! I also frequently ate mandazi at various kiosks
in Narok, Kenya, then a small and very dusty frontier town. at these
establishments, fashioned from corrugated iron sheets and other types of
available materials, people drank very sweet tea with their mandazis. Often,
they dipped the mandazi into the tea. I did not dip.
Tammy: So is it a dumpling? Or a doughnut? In reading descriptions of
the recipe, it sounds a lot like a sopapilla that you might get in New
Mexico. What’s your opinion about how we should classify it?
Chris: Not a dumpling. Mandazi is doughnut-like but without any sugary
toppings. Tea is already loaded, beyond belief really, with sugar.
Tammy: As a historian, you might be able to give us a sense of what
influences helped shape East African cuisine. Can you talk a bit
about the history of Kenya and Tanzania and how that history is
visible in the foods people eat?
Chris: Well, Tammy, I’d say that East Africa has a cosmopolitan cuisine closely
tied to its history as part of the Indian Ocean world. South and southeast
Asian influences are everywhere from food on the city streets to the farmer’s
field.
Indigenous people have incorporated into their ag systems rice, bananas,
plantains, yam, papaya, mango, pepper and other spices, systems for more
than two thousand years. And sorghum, a crop indigenous to Africa is the
most consumed grain in India.
But let’s not forget, Tammy, about American crops like maize and cassava.
They have been adopted into cropping beginning with the Portuguese
incursions into the Indian Ocean in the sixteenth century. East Africans
consume them daily as a porridge or a boiled dish with the consistency of
polenta. In fact, ugali, made with maize flour is probably the most consumed
food in east Africa.
Though rice is preferred on the coast and at special occasions upcountry.
I could go on but we seem to be running out of time.
Tammy: What is your favorite dish – the one you always try to get
when you visit the region?
Chris: My favorite dish is biryani and the best I’ve eaten has been at the dolphin
restaurant in Zanzibar town on Unguja (Zanzibar). Perhaps better, was the
biryani I ate in 1983 on lamu Island (Kenya). In the coastal towns, chefs make
biryani using a sauce and either beef, chicken, or fish. There is nothing like it.
I also love East African style
chapatis. You’ll find the world’s best at the Dar Es Salaam fish market.
Tammy: Thanks again to Chris Conte for joining me to discuss East
African cuisine and the mandazi, which *might* be a dumpling. Stay
tuned as we continue our exploration of the fried, boiled, baked,
and yummy dumpling.
